One day when I was studying in China, one of the other foreign students came down with a terrible cold. None of the translators at the hospital were available, but he went to the doctor on call. The doctor checked his pulse and looked at his tongue, then wrote him a prescription in Chinese.
The student went to the hospital pharmacy where the pharmacist managed to explain to him that she didn’t have the necessary ingredients to fill the prescription. She told him to go to the city and wrote an address on his prescription. She even took the time to draw him a little map.
My friend didn’t want to wander around a strange city sick and alone, so he asked me to go with him.
We followed the map, but when we got to our destination it appeared to be a restaurant. We couldn’t see a pharmacy anywhere, so we went into the restaurant to see if anyone could point us in the right direction.
The manager of the restaurant looked at the prescription with the directions. She gestured to us to sit and disappeared into the kitchen. We were confused, but sat. We thought she must be looking for someone who could explain the directions to us.
10 minutes later she came out holding a giant bowl full of broth, a variety of herbs, and a whole chicken. She put it in front of my friend and managed to explain to him that he should finish it all. My friend managed to eat most of the soup, and we went back to the hospital, where he went right to bed and slept for 14 hours. The next morning he work up feeling fine, with a new appreciation for traditional Chinese nutrition.
For an easy recipe to improve your own winter, check out this post.
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